The Cheapest Apify Social Media Scrapers (apidojo Alternative)

Why people look for an apidojo alternative

apidojo, Clockworks and Compass build solid Apify actors, but their pricing is aimed at heavy commercial use. If you only need a few thousand TikTok videos, a list of local businesses, or the comments under one YouTube video, those rate cards can feel steep for the volume you actually want. The Dami_Studio actors below cover the same common jobs on a pay-per-result model, with no login or API keys required where stated, and failed runs are not billed.

This is a roundup, not a benchmark. We are not going to invent star ratings, user counts or testimonials, because these actors are new and have no public reviews yet. What we can tell you honestly is what each one returns, how the billing works, and where it sits relative to the official platform API.

The lineup at a glance

Every actor runs in one click on Apify's cloud and exports to JSON, CSV or Excel. You can also pipe results into Notion or Slack. Here is the full set covered in this guide:

Where a dedicated walkthrough exists, the sections below link to it so you can go deeper on input fields and edge cases.

What data you get

The exact fields differ per actor, but the shape is consistent: a flat list of records you can drop straight into a spreadsheet or database. A few representative examples:

• TikTok: video URL, description, author handle, play count, like count, comment count, share count, music title and cover image. See the TikTok Scraper guide.
• Twitter/X: tweet text, author, created date, like/retweet/reply/view counts, and media URLs from the tweet-scraper; for accounts, follower counts and verified status from the user scraper.
• Instagram: caption, like and comment counts, view counts on reels, media URLs, hashtags and owner. See the Instagram Scraper guide.
• Google Maps: business name, category, full address, latitude/longitude, rating, review count, phone, website and place ID, the standard fields for a local lead list. See the Google Maps guide.
• Reviews: from Yelp and Trustpilot you get review text, star rating, reviewer name, dates, verified flags and, on Trustpilot, the company reply and TrustScore.
• YouTube: comment text, like count, reply count, author name, verified badge and timestamp. See the YouTube Comments guide.

How to run any of them, step by step

The flow is the same across the whole set:

• 1. Open the actor page on Apify and click Try for free (you will be asked to create a free Apify account if you do not have one).
• 2. Fill in the input. Most actors take a search term, a username or hashtag, or a list of URLs. Set a results limit so you control the cost.
• 3. Click Start. The run executes on Apify's cloud, so nothing installs on your machine and your IP is never used.
• 4. Export. When the run finishes, open the Dataset tab and download JSON, CSV or Excel, or connect Notion/Slack for automatic delivery.
• 5. Schedule it (optional). Use Apify's scheduler to re-run on a cron, for example a weekly refresh of a competitor's posts or a review feed.

A realistic input for the Google Maps actor looks like this:

• searchStringsArray: ["coffee shops in Austin, TX"]
• maxCrawledPlaces: 120

And a single output record would carry fields such as: title, category, address, city, postalCode, phone, website, totalScore (rating), reviewsCount, latitude, longitude and placeId. The other actors follow the same pattern: small structured input in, flat records out.

When and why to use these

Reach for this set when you want results without managing infrastructure or platform credentials:

• Lead lists: google-maps-scraper and yelp-scraper turn a search like "dentists in Chicago" into a contactable list with phone, website and geo.
• Competitor and content research: tiktok-scraper and instagram-scraper pull a creator's recent posts with engagement metrics so you can see what performs.
• Reputation and review monitoring: trustpilot-scraper and yelp-scraper let you track ratings and pull review text for analysis or alerts.
• Audience and sentiment work: tweet-scraper plus youtube-comments-scraper give you raw text to feed into sentiment or topic analysis.

If you need to scrape continuously at very large scale with a tight SLA, the established commercial actors and official APIs are worth comparing too. For one-off jobs and small-to-medium recurring pulls, the cheaper pay-per-result model usually wins on total cost.

Honest comparison: these vs the official API vs paid incumbents

Versus the official platform APIs. Most of these platforms either have no usable public API for this data (TikTok, Instagram, Yelp business listings) or gate it behind approval, app review, OAuth and quota limits. The X/Twitter API in particular is expensive at its paid tiers. These actors skip that entirely by reading public pages, which is faster to start with but is unofficial: a platform can change its layout and break a scraper, and you should respect each site's terms and applicable law, and only collect public data.

Versus apidojo, Clockworks and Compass. Those actors are mature and battle-tested, and for the highest-volume production pipelines that maturity matters. The trade-off is price. The Dami_Studio actors target the same jobs at a lower per-result cost, run keyless where stated, and do not bill failed runs. They are newer, so they have no public review history yet, which is the honest counterweight: you are trading a track record for a lower bill. Try a small run first and judge the output quality yourself before committing to a large job.

Versus building your own. A DIY scraper means writing and maintaining selectors, rotating proxies, handling anti-bot measures and hosting it somewhere. These actors fold all of that into a per-result price, which is usually cheaper than your own engineering time for anything but a core product feature.

FAQ

Do I need an API key or login for any of these? No login or API key for tiktok-scraper, tweet-scraper, instagram-scraper and youtube-comments-scraper. You only need a free Apify account to run actors on the platform. The maps and review actors are also keyless.

What does "pay per result" actually mean for cost? You are billed for the records returned, not for time or servers. For example, tweet-scraper is around $0.13 per 1,000 tweets and instagram-scraper starts from $0.40 per 1,000 posts. Set a results limit in the input to cap spend, and failed runs are not charged.

Are these legal and safe to use? They collect publicly visible data. You are responsible for using that data in line with each platform's terms, your local laws and privacy rules such as GDPR. Avoid scraping private or login-gated content, and do not use the data to harass or spam.

How do these compare to apidojo on quality? apidojo is more established and has a longer track record. These actors aim to match the common fields at a lower price. The fair test is a small trial run: scrape 100 records on both and compare the fields and accuracy for your use case.

Can I automate or schedule runs? Yes. Use Apify's built-in scheduler for cron-style runs, and route output to JSON/CSV/Excel or directly to Notion or Slack.

Where to start

Pick the actor that matches your job and run a small batch first. If you want local business data, start with the Google Maps Scraper; for social content, the TikTok and Instagram scrapers; for X/Twitter, the tweet-scraper. The full lineup, including Yelp, Trustpilot and YouTube comments, is on the Dami_Studio store.

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